3.1 Kickstart 40.70 vs 40.68?

[olsen]

40.70 exists for A1200/3000/4000D&T.
The difference is only the SCSI.DEVICE.
When they started to chip the 3.1 ROMs they got feedback about deadlooks from HDDs.
The lastminute change .. they shiped ROMs with a older scsi.device which seems to be more stable.
V40.68 ....

Exactly. The same sort of problems also existed for the A600/A500/A2000 ROM version. The scsi.device V40 crashed during the interrupt handler initialization, which is why the A600HD had scsi.device V39 in ROM.

As far as I know the final ROM changes to V40, through 40.70, all came about because the unified SCSI driver required further testing, but as Commodore was approaching its final days, time and resources were getting scarce.

It may have been a risky to build this unified SCSI driver in the first place. Because of the range of hardware it supported (A590/A2091/CDTV SCSI, A3000 SCSI, A600/A4000/A1200/CD32 IDE, A4000T/A4091 SCSI), the internal dispatcher code had to work very differently, too. The SCSI variant required a handler Task and an interrupt handler, and the IDE variant needed just an interrupt handler, but a different one from the SCSI variant.

What broke the V40 scsi.device for the A600/A500/A2000 was that the driver initialization code passed an uninitialized register, which would have contained a Task pointer in the SCSI variant, to the respective setup code. Out of curiousity, I tracked down and fixed this bug, and the resulting driver worked fine.

[Piru]

What broke the V40 scsi.device for the A600/A500/A2000 was that the driver initialization code passed an uninitialized register, which would have contained a Task pointer in the SCSI variant, to the respective setup code.

Ouch.

Still, not as bad as breaking the whole AUTOCONFIG(TM) in KS 1.2 and later selling KS 1.3 separately as an upgrade to allow booting off HDD. This problem was trivial to fix as well (make sure that correct a6 is used for AllocMem call), and it made KS 1.2 support AUTOCONFIG(TM) just fine.

[alexh]

My A3000 had KS1.4 and the A3000 version of 3.1 v40.70 (plus the special KS1.4 extension) on a file in DEVS:

You sure these are physical chips you've got?

[olsen]

Ouch.

Still, not as bad as breaking the whole AUTOCONFIG(TM) in KS 1.2 and later selling KS 1.3 separately as an upgrade to allow booting off HDD. This problem was trivial to fix as well (make sure that correct a6 is used for AllocMem call), and it made KS 1.2 support AUTOCONFIG(TM) just fine.

If I remember correctly, autoconfig worked fine as long as your PIC didn't use a ROM. Memory expansions and I/O cards such as the A2065 worked under Kickstart 1.2, and even auto-booting hard disk as long as you set a jumper to disable the ROM.

Back in the late 1980'ies I worked on a hard disk driver for an A590-like expansion. I managed to barely get auto-booting to work through one major ugly hack (thank god the original FFS was basically one position-independent section of code). But no matter what, you couldn't attach the hardware to an A500 with Kickstart 1.2 installed unless you flipped a switch at the back of the device which disabled the ROM. If you left the ROM enabled, the A500 would crash early during system startup.

I think Ralph Babel first described the culprit in his English version of the Amiga Guru Book: the Kickstart 1.2 ROM decoding code had a LINKEXE macro invocation in place of the correct CALLSYS. That bug took more than a year to find & fix, and it was part of the last set of changes made to expansion.library V33 in May 1986.

[desantii]

Yes, physical chip. Has a sticker that says "Pilot Production Version"

 

My A3000 had KS1.4 and the A3000 version of 3.1 v40.70 (plus the special KS1.4 extension) on a file in DEVS:
 
You sure these are physical chips you've got?

[rxxic]

Sorry to revive this old thread but the information fits well in here.

Out of curiosity I would like to put together a newer ROM for my CD32.
I'd like to use the newest modules from 3.2.2.1.

While researching a little bit, I noticed that GATEWAY updated the ROM for the CD32 with a newer cdui (40.21), cdstrap (40.21), scsidisk (40.20) against the older versions of the r40.68 ROM (respectively 40.20, 40.20 and 40.12). (source http://capitoline.twocatsblack.com/index.php/known-roms/)

I just purchased the newest AmigaForever package and also AmigaOS3.2  (I can show a proof of purchase if desired) but I can't find r40.70 for the CD32.
I also searched the web and my search was unsuccessfull.

The interesting bits are cdstrap and cdui.

Anyone knows where to get r40.70 for the CD32?
Or does someone know what was updated in the modules? (I suppose the scsi.device is not so relevant as the r47 is newer anyway)

Thanks!

edit: correction, it wasn't Gateway but still Commodore who updated to the r40.70

[F0LLETT]

Sorry to revive this old thread but the information fits well in here.

Out of curiosity I would like to put together a newer ROM for my CD32.
I'd like to use the newest modules from 3.2.2.1.

While researching a little bit, I noticed that GATEWAY updated the ROM for the CD32 with a newer cdui (40.21), cdstrap (40.21), scsidisk (40.20) against the older versions of the r40.68 ROM (respectively 40.20, 40.20 and 40.12). (source http://capitoline.twocatsblack.com/index.php/known-roms/)

I just purchased the newest AmigaForever package and also AmigaOS3.2  (I can show a proof of purchase if desired) but I can't find r40.70 for the CD32.
I also searched the web and my search was unsuccessfull.

The interesting bits are cdstrap and cdui.

Anyone knows where to get r40.70 for the CD32?
Or does someone know what was updated in the modules? (I suppose the scsi.device is not so relevant as the r47 is newer anyway)

Thanks!

edit: correction, it wasn't Gateway but still Commodore who updated to the r40.70

Just do as I did install, OS3.2 then use loadmodule to load them all into ram, reboot and its updated.
I have a 32GB SSD on mine, it wont see last partition until I load all the updated modules on first boot.

Also, wasn't 40.70 for A4000T?

[Jope]

Also, wasn't 40.70 for A4000T?

40.70 was built for every configuration, but all the others apart from A4000T were rolled back to previous builds due to various scsi.device incompatibilities.

[Mikeywikey]

Not only was a 40.70 built for the CD32, CD32 (with dev board), there was also one built for the CD1200 too, 40.71 is quite a rare beast, it’s basically 40.70 built with a new compiler toolchain by Gateway, I think there’s some fixes, but basically just a recompile, but doesn’t include CD32.

Building a 2Mb CD32 ROM is easy (which is what you’ll need for Hyperion 47.111), but unfortunately the CD32 can’t use a 2Mb ROM without hardware mods.